There are a number of diseases and conditions that may cause upper respiratory tract symptoms that, while they may not rise to a ciritical condition, may result in notable discomfort, such as severe coughing, that can result, for example, in exhaustion, severe loss of sleep or rest, inability to concentrate on tasks, and so on.
One of the most common of such diseases is “croup”, which is a viral infection of the upper and lower airways that can be caused by a range of viruses and that causes difficulty in breathing, especially when inhaling. The symptoms of croup may initially be similar to those of the common cold, but croup will cause swelling of the lining of the airway, causing the airway to narrow and making breathing difficult, resulting in, for example, a barking cough and hoarseness.
Croup may also appear in repeated episodes for various reasons, including allergies.
Certain croup symptoms, such as coughing, result from the narrowing and drying of the upper airway and relief for croup symptoms, at least in milder cases, may be obtained by providing the patient with cool and preferably moist air to breath.
The traditional ways of treating the symptoms of croup include humidifiers, cool mist vaporizers or ultrasonic nebulizers, providing warm, moist air, such as in a shower, and taking the patient into an environment having cooler and preferably moist air, such as taking the patient outside in suitably cool weather. All of these methods, however, suffer from the same disadvantage of being cumbersome and inconvenient to use. For example, humidifiers, cool mist vaporizers or ultrasonic nebulizers require confining the patient to a relatively small area, as does the use of a hot shower, which confines the patient to a space that is relatively smaller and that can be very uncomfortable. In a like manner, going outdoors into cooler and perhaps moister air is useful only if the air outside is in fact cooler and moister; this method may not be practical in, for example, Arizona in the summer. It will also be appreciated that these problems are compounded when the symptoms are relatively mild, so that the patient is not completely exhausted, and when, for example, the patient is an active child.
The present invention offers solutions to these and related problems.